


An Empty Mind

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Coupling (UK)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jeff muses on Patrick. Slash if you extrapolate hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Empty Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Minim Calibre

 

 

Steve, Jeff thinks, is much more real than Patrick or himself. Granted, his realness also makes Susan permanently cross with him - but it is the "How could you?" kind of cross, not the "You're at it again" kind. And not only Susan, women tend to treat Steve seriously in general. As if he were an actual human being rather than a walking, breathing nuisance created for the purpose of messing with their otherwise perfect existence.

Unlike Jeff, who sometimes thinks it unfair and sometimes blames himself for being so bugged because women shut him out from the ranks of humanity. He is certain that women think of themselves as the only real humans, and few men are acknowledged by them as their equals. He tends to agree with that projective point of view when he feels pathetic and unworthy, which is most of the time.

Patrick, on the other hand, is so far off from a woman's ideas about what should be happening inside a real person's head that it renders him almost invisible. That's why he picks up women so easily, Jeff supposes: they barely realize he is there, so they can't possibly mind him. They regard him as placidly as if he were a useful household appliance or a cute, clean, well-trained domestic animal.

Come to think of it, Patrick managed to find his way into Jeff and Steve's friendship in the same invisible manner. He just somehow happens to be there, and they don't mind it at all. It's not that Patrick imposes on anyone; inviting him along always feels like the most natural thing to do, a thing you don't give a second thought and forget about it the instant you've done it (actually, a few times Patrick complained about people reminding him about where and when they'd arranged to meet him as if they expected him to forget - Jeff assumes usually the matter is they themselves forget having told him already). The man seems to generate a field of blankmindedness around him.

Jeff is a bit jealous of that ability, and all the woman goodness available for the almost-invisible man is just one of the reasons, but not the main one. Mostly it is the wish to be able to switch his mind off like this and be totally unaware of all the complications life supplies to a man on a minutely basis. Because if you don't think about something it is likely to disappear. (Jeff has been told many times - in fact, every time he pronounced that notion aloud - that it is not the case, but he finds it hard to believe since he has never yet succeeded to cease thinking about the things he would like not to be or to never have been however ardently he tries.)

Jane once dragged him into a tea ceremony class - of course it wasn't exactly him she wanted to drag there, and he doesn't remember how Steve managed to skive off from enhancing his spirituality (it was back when he and Jane were together) and Jeff ended up his deputy - must have been quite desperate. The small, thin Japanese woman, when she wasn't explaining the Japanese names for quite shabby-looking objects and ordinary-looking procedures, was urging him to empty his mind - but how on earth could a person do that while crouching on the floor in company of a dozen women whose skirts were stretched tight around their thighs and who kept leaning forward? Even if Jeff could switch off his inner voice as he was told (and he couldn't), his brain would still be clogged by the sheer number of cleavages and knees in the vicinity.

It couldn't help ending in Jeff blurting out something embarrassing, and he had foreseen it since the moment he had been asked to take his shoes off at the entrance. What little he learned from the class was that Zen is the thing involved with emptying your mind - whether the latter was a prerequisite for a Zen enlightenment or Zen was to help him do it somehow, he wasn't sure. Anyway, he rejected Jane's spiritual guidance on the matter, with which, on an afterthought, she was quite happy.

Now Patrick is the master of the art of mind emptiness (and perhaps he would master tea ceremony as easily, especially since many of the students in that class weren't half bad looking, only he wouldn't like learning so many words, and the instructor seemed very insistent on them). In fact, Patrick rarely thinks at all. An inattentive observer might call him stupid because of that, but Jeff knows better. He supposes it is a sign of great wisdom. Well, the Zen sages agree with him on that, and Patrick's achievements seem to prove that he is correct in his assumption.

Has Patrick always been like this or did he make himself learn this art? Jeff would like to know. Perhaps, Patrick could supply him with valuable information on how he does it. But the matter is tricky. It's not that Jeff is afraid to make another social blunder - who could be more easy-going than Patrick? The subject itself is so elusive he can hardly provide a coherent account of it even to himself; and Jeff knows from experience that what seems to him a perfectly reasonable chain of argumentation expounded in several steps that logically follow one another is for others, including people who know him for most of his life, complete gibberish that in order to make at least moderate sense requires a lengthy explanation involving much eye-rolling on part of the listener; so he needs to make sure he would be understood.

Therefore some time passes between his decision to ask Patrick's assistance in achieving the emptiness of mind and the actual request. Jeff considers and discards several approaches. For instance, "Could you teach me Zen?" will likely confuse Patrick and eventually both of them, and "How come you never think?" sounds offensive. In the end, Jeff plans a whole series of questions that should make the issue unfold gradually and tells himself firmly that he mustn't stray from the plan.

As soon as he finds himself one-on-one with Patrick and can be sure they won't be interrupted, he tells him he would like to ask a couple of rather personal questions.

`Ask away,' Patrick says, and smiles that self-confident smile, and there's the dimple on his cheek - or can you call that dent on a smiling man's cheek a dimple, doesn't that word apply to women and children only? Perhaps Jeff should invent an altogether new name for it? He immediately forgets his agenda in favour of this new question which he announces to Patrick - and what follows isn't Zen at all but nevertheless excellent.

 


End file.
